M. Cathcart

"A skeptic's discovery"? Not really.

Revisado: 11-08-24

There was never anything skeptical about this author, nor the doctor who reads the forward. They both seem to be quite happy to fully believe all kinds of things that have little to do with the study of the possibility of life after death, about which I certainly have an open mind and in which I am deeply interested, finding many works on the subject quite profound and moving. This work feels more like a Weekly World News version of the concept, where the listener/reader is assumed to already take as fact all manner of psychic and supernatural phenomena, and nowhere does the author give much evidence to support those beliefs. I was hoping, based on the title, to enjoy the evolution of a skeptical writer who discovers there may be more to consciousness after death than she first believed... instead I got someone who kind of comes off like a believer in ANYthing and uses those other phenomena to argue the existence of life after death. It's not a little confusing. Also, I was NOT expecting a workbook, yet the author asks us to participate in mental exercises and homework. Sorry, I was wanting a good read about a profound subject, not a dippy teacher who accepts anything and gives out homework to boot.

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Classic Bradbury, deserves better reading.

Revisado: 07-13-24

One of the great works of science fiction and fantasy. I've known every word of this book since my preteen days, and still enjoy re-reading it every so often. I mean, ya gotta love Bradbury, unless you have a problem with occasional gushing prose, I guess, but that's part of his wonderfulness -- so this audiobook is just fine in that regard. I just wish the narration was a little better. It's not BAD, but with perfect hearing I just can't stand ASMR-type performances, and even if it is not intentional here, there is a problem with volume extremes and some mouth noises, anywhere from mildly distracting to damned irritating. The acting is fine, but the general performance style is "start sentence at normal volume, but end it in a whisper wherein only consonants can be heard." Honestly, there are entire stories/chapters that follow this audio rollercoaster: "THEY TURNed in at four in the morn-gksxtleksctskpxtstscxkyssss..." or "AS LONG AS the rockets werstxstxksxtlckxsss..." And it's not as simple as finding one right volume level even with phones/buds because there is also a lot of that very common problem with many audiobooks, the whisper abruptly becoming a shout -- "thecaptainroseandsaid I DECLARE THIS LAND...!" and you jump out of your skin. I don't regret spending the credit on it, but I can't relax with it like I can with so many other great audiobooks.

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Cheap, boring, misleading. Avoid.

Revisado: 12-03-20

Really just bad. I was hoping for an interesting 3-and-a-half-ish hours of radio and TV weirdness -- I mean, the thing is *called* Weird Radio and TV -- but what I got instead was a series of endless treatises on WWII/Nazi German history (especially of Panzer tanks), anti-semitic radio pastors from the '30s, redundant chapters on paranormal tech, and TV station takeovers from activists in the '80s. YES, I am aware that these things need context and historical perspective to be presented properly, and being a lifelong radio buff (I collect and restore vintage radios and love all things OTR, broadcast history, shortwave and amateur radio; my call sign is N0TLD) I was certainly expecting contextual set-up for each subject, in fact was looking forward to it. But so much of this is just a rambling tangent that eventually comes around to "Oh, yeah, we were supposed to be talking about radio and TV signals." For some reason, much of the information is very repetitive, to the point where I thought the chapter list was replaying or skipping, somehow. There is some scant mention of pirate radio, and a bit about EVP/ITC phenomena, but all treated scattershot, aloof, read by Jim Johnston's walrus mustache. I don't even know if he has one, but you can hear one. What you CAN'T hear, disappointingly, are any actual recordings -- there is no other audio but the narrator, no clips or recordings of ANYthing mentioned. I realize (obviously) it's supposed to be an audiobook, which has initially been understood to mean a printed book being read aloud, and in that case there would not be recordings in the original book... yet this was NEVER a print book, it is a newly created audio work and as such it should have been only natural to include AUDIO of events being touted. But no, no actual historical audio at all. It's just Jim's Mustache **reciting** Orson Welles' dialogue after his War of the Worlds broadcast, **reciting** Charles Coughlin's disgusting radio rants (of which there is FAR too much quoted for comfort), and so on. It feels like just a bunch of hashed together tidbits from Wikipedia, like a high school sophomore book report, thanks to the digital-dartboard style so typical of Charles River Editors' products. It's cheap, like the discount coffee table books at the front of a bookstore -- the titles and covers can grab you, but the content is just boring, disappointing garbage. There is nothing in this 'audiobook' worth the credit/price, that you can't find for free easily online... and in fact, you can hear ACTUAL recordings of all of those things and more for free online, too. So just avoid it.

EDIT/UPDATE:

After some time, I've tried listening again to see if I am being too harsh.

I'm not. This thing is AWFUL.

I am sorry I paid for it and wish I could exchange it but apparently Audible won't let me for now. Thanks Audible, for not only providing this audio dreck but making it impossible to return/remove from my library.

And never again, Charles River Editors. Never again.

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fine, but... music?

Revisado: 11-19-20

I have always enjoyed King's quirky voice, with that glottal/glossal/sinusy, warbling 'L' issue he's always had. So any time I get King reading King, I am all for it. No, he's not any great voice actor, but it's HIS story, and Needful Things is a perfectly King-y good thriller/chiller tale and all of that makes this a fine audio 'read.'

It's the goddamned MUSIC that ruins it. Music in audiobooks is never a great idea, not in strict narrative audio works. In radio shows, dramatizations, etc., of course it's obviously an integral part of more complex productions, but for an audiobook wherein the only other element of the piece is the narrator -- no other sound effects, no other actors, just a single reader -- music is simply out of place, distracting and kills the atmosphere more often than not. It occurs under narration, too, not just between chapters but under King's voice, and it sometimes overrides the narration.

It's out of place even if it's GOOD music... but the synthy pieces scattered across this read are just cheap and bad. NONE of it is good, and most importantly, none of it is NECESSARY. This kind of audiobook does NOT bear well, let alone require, any music at any point. A little theme at the very start, or at the end credits, can be acceptable but any more than that in a simple, single reader piece like this is just wrong.

BUT it's King reading King and for a King fan, it's probably worth it. I'd just love a non-musical version.

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Fun, but like all such things, kind of silly

Revisado: 11-14-20

I enjoy this one. The narration is perfect -- Zackman sounds just like the lecturer/NPR host/cryptoprofessor Godfrey writes herself to be.

I have forever loved cryptozoology and related subjects, and have a vast library of books, magazines, articles, art, etc., all about the wonderful world of the weird. This book fits right in.

Yet as happens in most such works, the author makes some logical, procedural errors. Godfrey's main mistake or oversight is that the plural of anecdote is not data. The reliability of an eyewitness is never more or less than it always is; your odds of being a credible witness do not increase with the amount of times you claim sanity, sobriety or expertise. Being human doesn't mean you are automatically wrong, but it sure doesn't mean you are a perfect observer either.

A minor peeve is the mention of various scary clown pop culture references but completely ignoring Pennywise from IT.

But the biggest issue I have with this one is that it really ought to be called 'Various Dog Things.' The VAST majority, like, 3/4 of the work are about mysterious dogs, dire dogs, witch dogs, and other kinds of unknown dog-like dog monsters. Go Dog Go, for the National Enquirer set. It gets very, VERY samey.

But it's still fun for most of the front section and the narration has exactly the kind of strident, dramatic pseudoseriousness that one would want from this kind of material. You can hear the smirk in the seriousness, and that makes it very fun.

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Classic story, amateurish reading

Revisado: 11-13-20

Some books just seem not to translate to audiobook form very well.

I've read this story a few times since its original publication, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has earned the accolades and classic status it's received since then.

I want to be fair up front and suggest that Straub's style, his kind of wordplay, in this story at least, does not lend itself to audiobook greatness. There are a lot of characters and twists and storylines strung out all over and reading it required a few notes and rereads for me to really get the full effect of what Straub accomplished. There's a lot going on, from the viewpoints of numerous characters over various points in time that jump to and fro.

It would be difficult, therefore, for ANY actor/narrator to make everything feel fluid, smooth, understood with ease... basically all the aspects of what we generally consider a satisfying audiobook.

Buck Shirner deserves respect for sitting down and laying out the whole, long, involved tale, but he is just not up to the task. The story needs New England, yet he is Old West. He has a fine, rich, warm voice but it's miscast here, like a romance read by the beef council commercial guy (yes, I know that's Sam Elliot). He's simply not a ranged enough voice actor to credibly portray multiple characters uniquely enough for the listener to grasp "who's who/m?" far too often. His reading from the very beginning seems very strident, purposed, very overdone, over-pronounced, almost like he's never read out loud before and is unsure about being understood. I know he's a good actor, I've seen him in numerous films and TV bits but he is just not a versatile *voice* actor, not enough for *this* kind of work at any rate. There IS a difference between stage, screen and voice acting.

Here, his men have two voices (and occasionally a third voice that is somewhere between the main two), and his women generally have one, and that a kind of breathy southern belle-ish stereotype, very similar to what one might expect to hear from a boy trying to sound like a "whoman" (think Dustin Hoffman's 'Dorothy Michaels' in Tootsie). There is also an overwrought "Cherman" accent zat muzt be hert to be beleefed.

There's just too much well-written story at stake to lose in the aural confusion of "who's that again AND why are they speaking so cartoonishly?" and for that, I cannot recommend this audiobook. Grab the actual book and experience a classic.

If I'd never read it before, and was coming to this work with no previous understanding of what was taking place, I'd have been lost by the middle of the prologue. It's not the book's fault -- reading it allows one to process everything at one's own pace and rhythm, so it's not the writing.

It's the narrating.

Sorry Buck. I appreciate that it's hard work, and long. But... no.

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Curiously bereft of... something.

Revisado: 09-21-20

The stories are well chosen and certainly represent some of the greatest of the era, but the narrator is just... I don't know, lifeless? Not exactly, but... robotic? Maybe. He's a bit stilted, with very little dynamic; his tone and energy level is essentially the same at the end of a story as it was at the beginning. The flatness of his reading makes me wonder if they just thought it would work simply because of his accent 'cred'. I'm not saying he has a bad or unpleasant voice, at all. It's his lack of emotion, his stilting precision, which bothers me. Yes, I 'get' these are Victorian tales and so maybe his stiff reading is purposeful, as so much from that era is always assumed to be somewhat dry and emotionless... but this is juuuust a bit too much. If that doesn't bother you, then by all means enjoy the hours of same-level monotony for sleeping or relaxing to otherwise classic and worthy stories.

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It's... alright.

Revisado: 07-30-20

The stories are fairly typical ghostly shorts of the Victorian/Edwardian/otherwise-period bent. Nothing too thrilling or chilling but entertaining enough for casual listening. Susie Berneis is a decent voice actor and her characterizations and accents are mostly well done, and she certainly narrates clearly (neither fast nor mumbly, as so many narrators seem to do these days). Unfortunately, the male voice actor, Robert Bethune, is just not nearly as good, and more unfortunately most of his lines seem to be quite a bit louder than Berneis's. It's enough to be jarring at points. Either the mix is uneven, or the difference between his abilities (and tone) and hers is such that the distinction is simply that noticeable. He's not terrible, but he's really not as emotive or effective as she.

I give three stars for each category -- it's 'alright' -- but I will not be bothering with the others in the series.

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I almost don't love it.

Revisado: 07-17-20

It's wonderful, because it's Sandman, which is Gaiman, and nothing Neil Gaiman does is ever less than wonderful. I loved the entire Sandman series of comics/graphic novels and still have them all, and love The Sandman mythos as much as I love anything by Bradbury, Tolkien, King, Lovecraft, Heinlein, Burroughs, Rowling, any of the greats.

So why then do I 'almost not' love this?

Well I DO love it... it's just... some of the acting is really pretty bad.

Voice acting is not screen acting, not by a long shot, and while some of the cast is great, and much of the cast is at least competent if not actually solidly good, some of them are just... bad. There are stretches of weak, overdone, stereotyped accents, of cartoonish emoting, so much that is broad, and nearly clownish (and not purposely).

Gaiman's narration is perfect, effortlessly Gaiman, and McAvoy and most of the leads are generally well-cast. It can't generally be blamed on the script/writing, though being an audio production there is the usually necessary amount of broader script exposition inherent in any non-visual medium (having to 'say' what would otherwise simply be shown), and that can always sound overdone or forced if it isn't done just right. There's a real skill in more nuanced, professional vocal talent that can get away with that kind of exposition without *sounding* like it... and there are just a lot of points where that skill is definitely *not* on display.

One real let down is Kat Dennings as Death. She never really rises above sullen in her delivery, a petulant mumbling teenager, something like a bored Miley Cyrus. Even when telling off Dream (for example), she just kinda hangs out in the middlings of emotion, sloshing her deadpan lines and a lot of it a little too quickly, kind of like your average high school play. For one of the greatest characters in Gaiman's universe, casting Dennings was a mistake.

Your opinion may vary of course and I don't mean to actually turn anyone off from listening to this. I just wish some of it had been less... amateurish.

But mostly it's true to the feel and spirit of the original books and I am very happy The Sandman is being reintroduced in yet another form. It's entirely worth the pay/credit. Just don't expect every voice to sound as professional or competent as most of the leads.

And long live Neil Gaiman. Pure genius.

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